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‘I have been going into this hell for decades’

Mani has spent nearly 30 years cleaning choked sewers, while enduring the stigma of his work and caste. And each time he dives bare-bodied into the sludge and human waste, he wonders if he will come out alive

"If you wear a safety suit, you will be like an astronaut, a
municipal officer once told me," says Mani, a 60-year-old conservancy
worker in the municipal corporation of Coimbatore, who dives into sewers to
clear blockages. "Sir, I told him politely, you try it first, and then I
will surely follow."

Mani (he uses only a first name) continues, "In India, if any
officer asks us to wear a safety suit and oxygen mask and then enter a manhole
or sewer line, he is either ignorant or just mouthing platitudes, because there
is no space to move inside. All we can descend in are our chaddis (underpants). They just want to fool us. They do not care because it
is our bodies that are in the shit, and they believe our caste was meant to do
this work."

Still, Mani takes some pride in his abilities, a product of
years of experience, and teaches other conservancy workers
how to dive into a manhole and survive the deadly gases. "Everyone these
days wants to teach us," he says, "but we know the problems better
than anyone. The government must modernise the sewage lines and manholes if the
deaths are to stop. All the rest is whitewash."

When he was a child, Mani’s father Subban and his mother Ponni
were employed as cleaners at a government hospital in Coimbatore. “We used to
live on the hospital campus,” he recalls. “After school, I would go directly to
the hospital and help with ECGs, X-rays and even postmortems. They used to pay
me 5-10 paise a day for this work back in the 1960s. I studied up to Class 8 and
then became a scavenger.”

Mani is a Dalit, from the Chakkliar caste. He left school
because his teachers and fellow students would call him thoti, a derogatory term for the
scavenging caste in south India, and ask him to sit separately. "They
would abuse me because I used to clean dead bodies and shit. Teachers would ask
me to sit outside the classroom," says Mani.

Mani’s wife Nagamma works as a sweeper at the district elementary
education office, where she earns Rs. 15,000 a month. Her father Nesayyar and
mother Kiruba were also conservancy workers, she says. "I studied up to
Class 6 in St. Mary's School. It was a missionary school, so I faced no
discrimination there, but for the outside world I was an untouchable. Being
Christian, I got no reservation, and therefore no job, in the municipal
corporation. I was married at a young age and became M. Nagamma, and because it
sounds like a Hindu name, I got this government job [as a sweeper].” Nagamma
has worked as a sweeper for 30 years and will retire in 2020.

Mani has been at his job since he was 27 years old, and now
earns Rs. 16,000 a month; before that, he did the same work as a contract
labourer. "In all these years," he says, "my body has got used
to the shit. But when I first began, I remember how difficult it was for me to
take off all my clothes and enter the sewers only in my underwear. For at least
a year, I felt so ashamed, as if I was standing naked on the street. Time and
adversity are the best teachers, however. Our caste is our fate, carved into
our foreheads. If you are born thoti, you are doomed to shit lifelong. Society will force you to become
a scavenger. To escape this fate you need a strong will and family support. We
were not able to make that escape, but we have made the way out for our
children."

Both Mani and Nagamma want their caste-based occupation to end
with them. They were certain they would not see their children suffer the same
discrimination. “I had only one dream – that my children should escape this
shit, these fatal gases,” Mani says. My wife and I have struggled to make this
dream come true.” Their daughter Tulsi is married and works as a product control
manager at a garment company, while their son Murthy works in a private company.

Watch video: Mani, along with his wife, Nagamma, talks about the stigma of his work and caste

Mani has promised to demonstrate how he judges the situation
inside a manhole before diving in to clear the blockage. The next morning, he
calls me to a blocked sewer near the district magistrate's office. He
goes behind a truck and comes out only in his underwear. He smiles and says, “I
have been going into this hell for decades, but each time I have the same fear
– I may not come out alive. Before entering, I close my eyes and picture my daughter's face.
Then I dive. She is my lucky charm. At critical times, when it becomes
difficult to remove the blockage, I take her name and decide to come out. So
far, I have always been saved.”

However, from April 1 to July 10 this year, 39 conservancy workers
have died across India in sewers or septic tanks, according to data submitted
to parliamentarians by the Safai Karmachari Andolan, a community-based movement working for the elimination of manual scavenging across the
country.

As Mani prepares to descend into the manhole, the other
conservancy workers open it and light a matchstick to check for the presence of
poisonous gases. After they have given the green signal, Mani enters and descends.

What if he does not come out alive? The other conservancy workers
seem calm. For them, it is business as usual. I stand there recalling Nagamma saying, "Every day I live in fear. It is very difficult to
have a normal life under so much pressure. Mani drinks almost every day. I
fight with him about this, but I know it is difficult to do this kind of
menial, dehumanising work without getting intoxicated. When I hear about deaths
in the sewers and septic tanks, I feel so much pain. I know what it is to be
the wife of a diver. No one treats our caste like human beings. We will die
with this stigma of caste."

After some time, Mani emerges from the manhole. His body is covered in sludge,
waste and shit. He cleans his face with his hand, and his eyes become visible.
"This time too I have been lucky," he says.

Photos: Bhasha Singh

Bhasha Singh

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Bhasha Singh is an independent journalist and writer, and 2017 PARI Fellow. Her book on manual scavenging, ‘Adrishya Bharat’, (Hindi) was published in 2012 (‘Unseen’ in English, 2014) by Penguin. Her journalism has focused on agrarian distress in north India, the politics and ground realities of nuclear plants, and the Dalit, gender and minority rights.